This one is incredible to me. New York, easily the state spending the most on treating children with autism and other spectrum disorders, cut off the $50 million it was paying a school in Canton Mass for about 150 children because the school uses backpacks to shock the children with “bee sting”-like electric jolts when they misbehave:
The Rotenberg Center provides an intensive, 24-hour program that begins with a typical school setting, but about half the residents require the “aversive therapy” of electric shock, according to Rotenberg staff. The center describes the one- to two-second shocks as similar to a bee sting.
For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where autistic and other disabled students wear backpack-like devices that shock them when they misbehave.
What’s next? Defunding a lobotomy clinic for autistic kids in Maine?